El Niño, a weather pattern that effects wind and ocean surface temperatures, may return to Texas this summer.
In the wake of an extreme hail storm and confirmed tornado sightings and watches, North Texas is understandably bracing itself against potential threats that could arise with the return of El Niño this summer. As of writing, the National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is saying there’s a 62% chance the problematic weather pattern will form in Texas between June and August and stay through the end of 2026. It’s unclear how severe it may be this year or what the exact timeline is going to look like. Tom Bradshaw, who works for the National Weather Service as its meteorologist-in-charge, said, “It’s not a slam dunk, but there is a decent amount of confidence that we’ll see an El Niño signal. What becomes more difficult is determining what those impacts actually look like.”
It’s that precise question that’s now on the minds of residents who want to understand if this recent stretch of storms is likely to continue, or worsen, over the summer when El Niño presents itself. To combat people’s worries, the Houston Chronicle took a deeper look into the weather pattern and whether it’ll bring more tornadoes and hail across the state. The bad news is that, yes, storms will happen more frequently because of El Niño and the weather will be wetter overall, but the good news is that it won’t bring tornadoes, hail, or damaging winds.
El Niño would likely bring more storms, but they probably won’t increase in severity
When analyzing El Niño data from the last 30 years, the Houston Chronicle was able to determine that the presence of the weather pattern does not directly result in severe storms taking place across Texas. El Niño will bring an influx of storms to certain parts of the state, but that will likely just result in increased rainfall. But, as CattleFax meteorologist Matt Makens pointed out to the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network, “Just because you hear El Niño doesn’t mean water for everybody. The farther west you go, the higher the chance you may stay dry.”
To make a detailed, complex story short, that basically means that it’s essentially a case of “wait and see” to determine how wet conditions will get and where. El Niño forms as the result of ocean temperatures rising to above average levels in the equatorial Pacific, which then shifts the jet stream in a more southern direction. Because of this, storms occur more frequently in impacted areas, like Texas. As the Houston Chronicle pointed out though, between 1992 and 2019, Southeast Texas saw about the same amount of severe weather events (i.e. tornadoes, hail, damaging winds) when El Niño was there as when it wasn’t. There were 155 severe weather events without El Niño, and 156 when it was taking place.
One difference that does exist between the El Niño years and the years where it passes over Texas is a 20% increase in flash flooding. 45 flash flood events took place between 1992 and 2019 during El Niño years, whereas only 36 flash floods happened during the years when it wasn’t present. This scientifically makes sense because El Niño leads to increased rainfall, which causes flooding. Hail storms and tornadoes require more complex meteorological elements to form in general, let alone to form in catastrophic ways. Tornados form when warm, humid air rises inside of thunderclouds at the same time that cold air is falling. Hail is the result of drops of rain being carried upwards during a thunderstorm—the droplets freeze once they hit colder parts of the atmosphere, forming the balls of ice that fall back to the ground. Neither of these is particularly common during El Niño storms.
It’s important to remember that spring typically brings the most active periods for damaging winds, hail, and tornadoes, so we’re currently experiencing a more elevated risk than we will be if El Niño ends up forming this summer. For additional graphs, statistic, and information, please click here.
